To remain competitive as technology advances, electronic designers must reduce required system physical space while increasing the system performance. This generally translates into increased power dissipation in a smaller space. However, as is well known, component reliability/life is related to operating temperature. Thus, the challenge is to pack the heat generating components closer together while maintaining acceptably cool temperatures. Traditionally, heat sinks are used to transfer heat from these components to the surrounding environment.
There are many prior art methods of attaching heat generating components, such as field effect transistors (FETs) and diodes, to heat dissipating devices. These include screws, straps, adhesives and spring clips of various types. Among the disadvantages of using screws is the time for attachment, along with the problem of electrical insulation of the component from the screw and heat sink. Straps often require some mode of securing them to the heat sink that causes an undesirable increase in space required for the combination of parts. Adhesives have disadvantages with storage and handling and some can fail with time. Further, a good adhesive may well prevent the reuse of the heat sink in the case where a failed component needs replacement. Known prior art spring clips interfere with air flow on the surface of the component(s) being cooled, some being of a design which increase the length of the path from the component to the fins of the heat sink and/or unduly increase the space required for the heat sink/component package relative nearby components.
As known among thermodynamic experts, having slots periodically situated in the fins of a heat sink disrupts air flow patterns and results in better heat dissipation than unslotted fins. While the slots are important to disrupt air flow patterns, the wider the slot, the less material is left to conduct and/or radiate heat to the environment. Thus most manufacturers of finned heat sinks have slots of a width just enough to provide adequate air flow disruption. For electronic circuits, these slots are typically about 1/10 inch or less in width. There are, however, many other types of finned and non-finned heat dissipating devices to which heat generating devices need to be attached.
It would be desirable if an attachment device could allow quick assembly of one or more components to a heat sink in a secure manner that did not substantially increase package profile dimensions, thereby allowing a higher density packaging, and still allowing replacement of components in a repair mode. It would further be desirable if such attachment device could, without major design modification, be adapted to be used on many different styles of heat dissipating devices.